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This story was submitted to the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ People’s War site by Wymondham Learning Centre on behalf of the author who fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

I went to King’s College, Taunton in 1939 when I was ten years old. Senior pupils were being awarded the victor ludorum, which made a great impression on me.

Throughout the war on the last night of term, the headmaster announced the names of those who had made the final sacrifice. At the end of the war, I was one of the few boys who remembered the senior boys who had gone to fight in the war.

I remember a family who went to Singapore in 1940 and people thought that they were lucky. Of course in the end Taunton proved safer.

My mother was a member of the Worcestershire Land Army committee. My father, a clergyman, kept a series of pigs in the grounds of the rectory, which helped the government’s food programme. Food was plentiful in Worcestershire, in the countryside, but school food was not so appealing.

I’ll always remember a song we sang at school:

Underneath the spreading chestnut tree,
Mr Chamberlain said to me,
“If you want to get your gas mask free,
Join the blooming A.R.P.�

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